Before I commit to this CMS...

[riverhawk]

Would Serendipity work well for me(sorry, it's another one of these questions)?

Without boring you guys with too many details, I would like my site to work in the following manner:

1. A user creates an account which triggers the following to occur:
-Directs them to a static, form-based page(correct term?) which has them specify some settings for a program I've written which will be entered into a database and these settings will also be converted into an XML file which will be stored in a newly created folder used by the new account(maybe foldername is based on userid?).

2. Every new user has their OWN blog which works in the normal fashion(media uploads, comments, etc.). Another XML file, based on my rules and DTD, is created for every change and or update(moving pictures to new albums, etc.) and stored in the above mentioned folder. This XML file, basically has all the blogs captured within it along with the links to the pages.

3. New blog entries can also be emailed to a "catch-all" inbox on my server where based on the sender's email address I can strip the text and add it to their blog and generate a new XML file including this new entry(or update the existing one, if one is present).

Possible with Serendipity? I have no PHP or SQL experience, but have coded in C, C++, and C# so I'm not a total newb and I'm willing to learn. Any design precautions I should take? Bottlenecks? Thanks. Everyone seems really helpful here.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

1. A user creates an account which triggers the following to occur:
-Directs them to a static, form-based page(correct term?) which has them specify some settings for a program I've written which will be entered into a database and these settings will also be converted into an XML file which will be stored in a newly created folder used by the new account(maybe foldername is based on userid?).

You could do that via a simple PHP plugin, yes. Of course the Serendipity Core wouldn't know where to redirect, so you would need to create a plugin that takes the necessary steps.

As a starting base you can use the serendipity_plugin_adduser plugin, which does something like that, there you can insert your custom code or redirect.

2. Every new user has their OWN blog which works in the normal fashion(media uploads, comments, etc.). Another XML file, based on my rules and DTD, is created for every change and or update(moving pictures to new albums, etc.) and stored in the above mentioned folder. This XML file, basically has all the blogs captured within it along with the links to the pages.

You can do that, see services like supersized.org or others that are offering Serendipity hosting. The "Shared installation" is what you want for that. Of course it also involes customized PHP code.

Serendipity has plugin event hooks when an entry is posted or updated, so you can trigger your own XML there.

3. New blog entries can also be emailed to a "catch-all" inbox on my server where based on the sender's email address I can strip the text and add it to their blog and generate a new XML file including this new entry(or update the existing one, if one is present).

Yes, the serendipity_event_mailer plugin can already do that.

Possible with Serendipity? I have no PHP or SQL experience, but have coded in C, C++, and C# so I'm not a total newb and I'm willing to learn. Any design precautions I should take? Bottlenecks? Thanks. Everyone seems really helpful here.

Without PHP knowledge, this is a bit hard of course. But PHP is very simiilar to C, so you should have no real problems there, I think.

You should get started with Serendipity 1.0, because there we have phpdoc documented functions, that should help you for kicks. And then looking at existing code and modifiying it should also get you kickstarted.

Of course, you can always ask back for more here

Best regards,
Garvin

[riverhawk]

Thanks...I'll get started.